Tag: surgery

Emery Brown, MD, PhD, and a team of collaborating investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital are hoping to make a fundamental change in the way anesthesiologists think about the process of sedation—one that changes the focus from the body to the brain.

Check out this great video showcasing the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital, home to the first public demonstration of surgery using ether as an anesthetic in 1846. The Ether Dome has played a central role in our hospital’s storied past, and still serves as a center for sharing innovative new medical ideas today.

Patients with all classes of obesity, including, mild, moderate, and severe, with all stages of fibrosis, experienced gains in life years following laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, compared with standard management and intensive lifestyle changes, based on the model, Dr. Kathleen Corey reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

Surgery also increased quality-adjusted life years (QALY) in those with moderate and severe obesity with all fibrosis stages, those with mild obesity and F2-F3 fibrosis, and in overweight patients with F3 fibrosis, said Dr Corey of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

“On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, [William T.G. Morton] successfully administered ether to a surgical patient in a public demonstration. As acclaim was heaped upon Morton, [Horace] Wells unsurprisingly cried foul—but so did [Charles T.] Jackson. A bitter dispute rose all the way to Congress…”